Thursday, 31 May 2007

It was 04:45 a.m. The vivid dream woke me up, puzzled as I was trying to distinguish between dream and reality. I felt I had to note it down, while it was remembered, still fresh in my memory. Before it is forgotten. However, it would not be significant as dreaming is just the shuffle of the things; events that happened, thoughts that crossed your mind, the day before. But wait, is there something worthwhile here. A new combination. Dreaming is shuffle, shuffle to new combinations, new combinations represent new thoughts, new thoughts a prerequisite of creative processes, dreaming connected to creative, creative to dreaming, dreaming the foremost example of imagination.

Apart from that, the mental note I so fervently wanted to write down, it was about a note posted in the Internet, that included within it, a reference to itself. A reference to itself? Self-referential? Was it in the Internet or was it in your own brain? Would it make any difference? Does that point to a similarity between the two structures? Of organisation? Self-similarity? That even though not everything has been elucidated for either of the structures, we should be free to assume that any model that applies for either of them, it would apply to the other one too. Any elements that become explicit for one, would expect to hold true for the other, too.

The odd thought that surfaced in that peculiar dream was triggered by my occasional browsing of program fault reports to Microsoft, among the tedium of information about the processes on, when the fault occurred, there are memory dumps of what was happening while you were online. Among them were personal messages from people that manage these memory dumps, in a form that resembled greetings to each other and these messages are carried while you browse the internet, completely unaware of their existence, the noise that represent the froth of the World Wide Web virtual digital environment. A TCP or UDP packet roaming the virtual vacuum, entering an IP address leaving their signature, sometimes harmful if it is a virus, wandering aimlessly directionless, a virtual message-in-a-bottle in the digital ocean. What if that virtual message-in-a-bottle had shape, determined by code in the same manner as a widget, and could sent information in an associated e-mail address that once it has been detected and clicked it would send that information to its e-mail address, a record of its whereabouts. At the same time the reference to itself would create information that will change the message-in-the-bottle in ways that reflect the information acquired by its encounters in the World Wide Web. To what effect? Who knows? The whole process might be in want, of identifying itself by goals and purpose, however its more important aspect is that it contains a chaotic seed (the self-referential and what will emerge, it can not be known. It would suffice to simply state that it will produce emergence. An emerging state. Its self-referential nature implied by the feedback loop, more vividly remembered. So somehow the statement contained a reference to itself, and that reference was fed back, and producing another statement, with new elements added on, and still containing the reference to itself too.And the process continued till, may be not 'till' but simply stating: producing emergence.

Friday, 25 May 2007

When I start to write I feel an excitement that captivates me, I am hooked. I do not know where it would lead me, what I do know, I sense that the tiny flicker of a thought in my mind can turn into a wildfire. Like Erich Harth's noise in our brain that some random sparkle, a random fluctuation in feedback response, builds upon.

As the flicker gathers pace it engages more and more of the ideas, the thoughts that passed into my consciousness in the past, the books I read, the passages I reaped through, grasping, twisting and turning them around, abstracting, combining with one another, constantly. Traversing through boundaries, surpassing context finally arrives to a new thought, a different kind of idea, developed in a sense similar to the one given by Kosslyn's words,

"to contemplate something that has never existed before",

mentioned in Erich Harth's book "The creative loop".

Provide a different approach a solution that makes sense. The thoughts jump from one to another effortlessly as if the path was already trodden, long awaiting for me to arrive. A force pulling me towards. I do not look back. A mental shift, a paradigm shift and once I arrive there the only way I can go is forward. Another thought another idea still awaiting.

This brings to me thoughts of intellectualization, as in the Wikipedia entry, attributed to Sigmund Freud which I found highly indignant and was left agitated as it made me feel as I was a mental case and I should seek treatment by some shrink. It was not comfort and I did not find solace in the statement that Leonardo Da Vinci was branded by Freud as a classic case for this affliction. What can I offer towards this approach that mollifies my expression? It is an extract from an interview of a scholar, I listened to in a Greek television channel, although it goes along the same lines, it lacks the clinical approach. It goes: 'All great achievements of human kind were the result of enormous efforts, humiliations, sacrifices. The reason being the need of personal expression of individuals with great anxiety. People that are in excellent condition, in health and wealth, have no reason to express their anxiety. They do not have anxiety, they have everything. Suffering is the source of inspiration. It creates anxiety and anxiety provides the push forward to reach a goal'. What goal? Can it be reached? Who knows.

Thoughts about humanity's place in the universe, the vastness of reality and earth our planet barely a grain in comparison, amidst all-powerful destructive forces and vast timescales. Could anything that we do can make a difference? That is not a pessimistic view. It is all a matter of putting things into perspective and go about our goals without flinching, undeterred, to constantly evolve and keep in perpetual motion, a dynamic state of being. Along these lines, I understand the part of the extract I did not mention. The Greek scholar also said

"to preserve the illusion".

Who can tell that the world we live in, is not an illusion. Another "matrix re-loaded".

We all have the potential to turn flickers into wildfires but some of us lost it somewhere in our arduous journey along the long drawn paths of our evolution. What was the catalyst that effected that process? What was the reason of loosing our potential to turn flickers into wildfires?

"the historical seed for all social discipline was military discipline, and that in all societies the social discipline developed for warfare would always have some significant influence on the structure of the state and the economy. Weber considered it self-evident that the second great agency of social discipline, and the one most likely to borrow lessons from the warriors, was the large-scale economic organisation: the Pharaohs' workshops, the slave-owners' plantations, the capitalists' factories and, presumably in our time, the corporate office."

What can we perceive from that extract? Is it not obvious? The infrastructure of the even larger-scale economic organisation of today, built along the lines of Max Weber's insight, demands from us rigid social discipline similar to the military discipline? And in the process leave behind the inspiration the flicker-wildfire-potential, soldiers in the line of duty. And to what avail? Certainly our world needs growth and progress and co-ordinated action is the only way to achieve it. But is it necessary to do that with military discipline? Can we not do that in another way. Who is actually benefiting from that?

An answer might be given from the extract that continues about the ruminations of Max Weber which goes:

"The need for war discipline arises from the utility in warfare of directing individuals so that masses of individual actions can be channeled into what from their leaders' standpoint is rational group behaviour."

So warfare proper, masses of individual actions directed, the need to direct it. By whom? By the leaders? Can an individual's standpoint be so determining, so absolute that would be allowed to dictate the behaviour of all the rest of the individuals? Do individuals need that? For what?

One of the main attributes of the economic organisation is to provide benefits. Benefits for the participants. In all scales. However, these benefits are not proportional are disproportionate. The efforts of each participant is equally important to the economic organisation, as everyone is an integral part. It provides the whole, a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. And as each part is equal, there should not be distinctions in benefit out of the economic activity. Each one should be appreciated and the profits shared proportionately. Everyone should be entitled to work and develop a sense of belonging.

A sense of belonging which will provide social discipline based on self-discipline and replace the military discipline that robs individuals of their personality. Alienates them and robs them of their dignity and humanity.

Wednesday, 16 May 2007

I was wondering why, when I write I can not find the right words to express myself. In the process of formulating the thought, words surfacing are incoherent, haphazard, inappropriate. However, if I doubt them and not use them, I would stop the formulation of the thought completely, especially when I think along the lines: "Am I right to use that word?" Even if I pause, I would loose the lead, the inspiration of the moment. If I reason at all, I would have lost the essence of my inquiry.

Chaos complete. Erich Harth's incomprehensible noise, mentioned in his "Creative loop" book. The unstructured, unordered (?) state space in the periphery of a chaotic attractor. And out of that noise a tiny fluctuation is singled out, is amplified and it grows into a full fledged thought, almost effortlessly, as if you tapped into a channel. A channel that leads your thought into the ordered segment of the state space of a chaotic attractor. Tranquility.